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"The goal of my teaching has always been, and remains, to train analysts." --Jacques Lacan, Seminar XI, 209 Arguably the most profound psychoanalytic thinker since Freud, and deeply influential in many fields, Jacques Lacan often seems opaque to those he most wanted to reach. These are the readers Bruce Fink addresses in this clear and practical account of Lacan's highly original approach to therapy. Written by a clinician for clinicians, Fink's Introduction is an invaluable guide to Lacanian psychoanalysis, how it's done, and how it differs from other forms of therapy. While elucidating many of Lacan's theoretical notions, the book does so from the perspective of the practitioner faced with the pressing questions of diagnosis, what therapeutic stance to adopt, how to involve the patient, and how to bring about change. Fink provides a comprehensive overview of Lacanian analysis, explaining the analyst's aims and interventions at each point in the treatment. He uses four case studies to elucidate Lacan's unique structural approach to diagnosis. These cases, taking up both theoretical and clinical issues in Lacan's views of psychosis, perversion, and neurosis, highlight the very different approaches to treatment that different situations demand.
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LACANIAN PSYCHOANALYSIS
THEORY AND TECFINIQI'E BRUCE
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A CLINICAL INTRODUCTION TO LACANIAN PSYCHOANALYSIS Theory and Technique L
Of iowa iowa City, IA 52242
BRUCE FINK
Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 1997
Copyrighted Material
Copyright t 1997 by the President
Fellows at Harsrard Coflege
ALl rights resenred
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Printed in I Fe tJniic&I
Hu hal
First I larvard University Press paperback edition, I
ibrary ii Congress
Data
Fink, Bru4it', 19S6—
theory and technique / Brute F;:i,
A clinical introduction to tacanian
J' cm includes bibliographical references and indr* (cloth) ISBN O-a14-
1.
[SUN Q-674-13536--9 (pbk) Jacques, 1"*)i-t 2. Psychoanalysis. I. Title! 8F109L2SE54 1997 151119 3'092—-dc2 1
96-52127
Copyrighted Material
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Jacques-Alain Miller—the general editor of Lacan's seminars and head of the
Ecole de La Cause Freudienne, who is widely recognized as the foremost interpreter of Lacan's work in the world today—taught me the lion's share of what I know about Lacanian psychoanalysis. I am greatly indebted to his ongoing "Orientation lacanienne," the weeldy seminar he gives as chairman of the Department of Psychoanalysis at the University of Paris VIII, SaintDenis, which I attended from 1983 to 1989. He provided many of the keys that have allowed me to read Lacan, and—as was true of my previous book, The Lacanian Subject (above all, Chapters 2—5 and 10 and the appendixes)—! rely
considerably on his published and unpublished lectures here. Chapters 6,9, and 10 are in part based, respectively, on his essays "An Introduction to Lacan's Clinical Perspectives," "On Perversion," and "Commentary on Lacan's Text," and a number of the figures I use in Chapters 8, 9, and 10 are derived from figures that he discusses extensively. Indeed, references to his work occur throughout, since it forms the backdrop for the view of Lacan's work I present. Colette Soler, one of the most experienced Lacanian psychoanalysts affiliated with the Ecole de Ia Cause Freudienne, has been especially influential in my understanding of Lacan's clinical work, and her work is quoted extensively here as well. Her essay "Hysteria and Obsession" was extremely useful to me in Chapter 8. Still, neither Jacques-Alain Miller nor Colette Soler would necessarily endorse the views expressed in th